Honeymoon To Die For (38 page)

He led her through a tunnel of light cut by the flashlight through the black forest. Ryder’s grip on her hand tightened. She could feel his excitement.

“It’s been a while,” he said more to himself than her.

“Somewhere you came to make out at night?” she teased.

“No. This was all mine. I never brought women with me when I came to the river.”

She was touched that he’d brought her. “Why did you come down here?”

“To hear my thoughts and breathe fresh air and listen to the river.”

She heard the rush of water as Ryder stepped from the trees onto the bank of a river that stretched over two hundred feet across to the other side. The river ran downstream to her right and below an interstate overpass. Bloated from recent hard rains, the fast-moving current doused any traffic noise.

Ryder flipped off the flashlight, but light from the interstate filtered down to outline his profile. He stood with his eyes shut as if absorbing the outdoors.

She wanted a picture of him like this, at peace.

No, she wanted to see him like this forever.

After a long minute, he opened his eyes and turned to her. “I would live outdoors if I could.”

Those words shouldn’t have cut her to the bone, but they did. She’d seen the wounds on his body and knew of the beating he’d suffered when he first entered prison. Locking him away in a tiny cell would be like stuffing a Bengal tiger in a dog carrier and expecting him to live that way.

It was difficult enough for someone who had actually
committed
the crime that landed him in prison, but heartbreaking to think about someone who suffered that fate who didn’t deserve it.

Ryder stuck the flashlight in his back pocket and reached for her. She missed his touch any time he was even a few feet away and moved into his arms. He hugged her, running his hand up her back and rubbing his face against her hair.

He whispered, “Stop doing that.”

She pulled back. “What?”

“Beating yourself up over what happened to me. I can see it in your eyes when you do. At the hearing, when you were cross-examined, you said you just gather information. You don’t pass judgment.”

“But I was convincing.”

“That’s your strength and you’ll be just as convincing when we find the truth.”  

She wasn’t sure she could handle the weight of his trust. What if she let him down and didn’t find enough answers? What if she couldn’t figure out what was going to happen on Sunday? What if they locked Ryder away and someone managed to kill him in prison this time?

Ryder turned her in his arms and started kissing the back and side of her neck. He shoved her jacket aside to nip her shoulder, making her laugh. “Is that your answer to everything?”

“Sure, unless you want to have sex, then I’ll defer to answer B.”

“You’re crazy.”

“About you.”

“Really?”  She wanted to bite her tongue. She hadn’t meant to say that.

His kisses changed from tickling her to a tender touch of his lips on her shoulder. He stopped kissing her and held her while the river raced by. “When this is over—”

Ryder shoved Bianca to the ground a split second after she heard the sound of something striking a tree next to them. She whispered, “Was that a—”

“Bullet.”  

Another bullet struck the tree closer to the bottom of the trunk. Bark flew off, hitting her on the cheek. The shooter was using a suppressor. She looked across the river. “Where is he?”

“In the woods.”

“Between us and the car?”

“Yes.”  He shifted her to the other side of him, putting himself between her and the shooter.

The next shot hit the dirt next to her leg.

Ryder wrapped her in his arms. “We’ve only got one way out of here.”

“Where?”

“The river.”  He rolled them into the water.

She gasped at the cold water that stole her breath. It felt like being wrapped in a coat of ice.  

Ryder had a grip on her arm. “Don’t panic at the cold. We’ll be okay.”

Bullets struck the water around them.

Being cold just fell way down on her list of concerns. The current shoved them downstream at a rapid pace. Bianca paddled her feet to help Ryder keep them close to the bank. He had on boots that had to feel like two concrete blocks once the water filled them up.

They battled to stay afloat in the current until they were swept under the interstate overpass, then Ryder tugged her to his right. She hit her knee against a hard surface and yelped.

He fought the current, dragging them, finally, to the bank a quarter of a mile downstream. He shoved her up out of the water and climbed out behind her, chugging air with labored breaths. She couldn’t talk for trying to breathe, then her teeth started chattering.

He pulled off his boots and poured the water out then put them back on. Stripping off his leather jacket, he wrapped it around her.

“You’ll get hyp ... pothermia,” she protested.

“I’ll be warm once I start moving.”  He stood and pulled her to her feet. “Can you walk?”

She nodded rather than try to talk without her vibrating teeth biting her tongue.

He hugged her to him, then started walking her away from the river. “The lights through these trees are for an apartment complex.”  

When they reached the backside of a two-story apartment building, he moved her over between two large bushes where her back would be protected by the wall. “I want you to squat down and stay here while I go back and see if I can get to the car.”

“
No!
” She grabbed his shirt.

“Keep your voice down.”

She did, but still argued, “You’ll get shot.”

“Give me more credit than that, Sweetheart.”

Okay, he
was
former Special Forces, but that didn’t make him bulletproof. “Can’t we go to the office for this place and call someone?”

“Who would we call? We don’t know who at VDE or in my family is behind this. If we call the FBI or Slye, this mission is over.”  He was quiet then said, “Maybe we
should
call your people.”

Was he serious? “No. I’m not giving up.”

“I don’t want you hurt.”

“Murdock won’t let you stay at VDE without me.”

“I know, but you’d be safe if we called this off now.”

Ryder was willing to abandon his chance at finding proof he hadn’t killed Kearn just to keep her out of danger? Her heart squeezed at the idea of him not ending up free from all this, and then the crazy organ turned into a gooey mush when he said things like that. “Then give
me
some credit for being able to deal with the risk.”  She put her fingertips on his lips. “I trust you to keep us both safe. Go get the car and I’ll wait.”

He kissed the fingers at his lips. “Promise me you won’t move until I come back.”

She hunkered down. “Promise me you’ll come for me.”

“Always.”  Then he disappeared into the woods.

CHAPTER 41

Ryder took off his boots and left them next to a tree he could locate when he returned to the apartment complex, then worked his way back upstream along the bank. His feet were freezing on the cool October ground after the dunk in river water.

What he wouldn’t give for a night vision monocular right now. And a weapon. Those shots had all been closest to Bianca. Someone might be trying to kill her, but he doubted it. The shots were suppressed, which meant the shooter was likely no amateur. His hunch was they were trying to scare her.

Pushing low growing brush aside, he forced his mind to stay on the threat and not how much he wanted to mangle the bastard trying to hurt her. When he passed beneath the interstate overpass, he waited a couple of minutes, listening and watching.

Nothing. He wove his way up the access road until he could enter the woods that bordered the dirt road to the river. It didn’t take long until he reached the parking area. He could see it under the sliver of a moon now that the clouds had cleared.

There was his Mustang. No broken windows. No slit tires.

A motion-activated bomb?

His gut said that was too overt. It didn’t fit the pattern for this threat.

He slipped silently through the night until he could crawl up close to the car. Pulling out his keys, he used the tiny LED light to check the undercarriage. No sign of being tampered with or anything attached.

He’d left the windows down, so he reached in and flipped a switch on his dash that killed the interior lights even with the door open. That was a modification he’d made when he dated girls who stayed out past curfew. They wanted to sneak out of the car without any lights coming on.

He eased the door open and slid in, then cranked the engine, threw it into gear and peeled out, slinging a dirt wake behind him.

No shots hit his car or came through the open windows.

That reinforced the sick feeling that he could no longer ignore. Bianca was clearly the target and he couldn’t keep her safe. Not here.

After making sure no one followed him, he returned to the apartment complex, parked and sat there a moment to watch for any movement. When nothing stirred around the buildings, he got out and opened his trunk to find a backup flashlight. There was a leather tool bag the size of a small tote that didn’t belong to him even though it was worn and dirty as if used for a long time.

He checked for wires, then opened the bag carefully and looked at the tools for a few seconds before it dawned on him the bag was not as large on the inside as it looked on the outside. Pulling out all the tools, he felt the bottom give in a squishy way. His fingers ran around the seams until he found a velcroed edge he pulled apart.

Five thousand in cash and a K-bar knife.

Had to be a gift from Sabrina. Her people had very likely inserted past VDE’s security to do this today. The money hadn’t been left as incentive to run, but to give Ryder backup when they had to keep their distance.

Sabrina’s team was taking risks for him.

Ryder’s
team.

The level of belief that everyone at Slye held in his innocence grew more humbling every day they stood in the gap for him.

As quickly as Ryder wondered why they hadn’t left him a handgun, he dismissed that thought. Sabrina had sent him a weapon that left no powder residue, no ballistic evidence, and could be wiped clean. The woman was a scary operative he never wanted to cross. She was as tough as she was exotic.

Bianca was tough in that same way, and easily as beautiful, with a mind just as sharp. She had skills and was solid under pressure, with the same ability to put a puzzle together at lightning speed. But there was one significant difference.

Bianca was not as deadly as Sabrina.

But Bianca didn’t need to be as long as she was with Ryder.

He searched the car for any tracking device on the exterior since he’d had it out of the garage over the last two days. The only true way to check for a tracker was with an electronic scanner, but he didn’t have one available, and bottom line, he wouldn’t remove it if he found it.

He wanted the bastard to follow them.  

He hurried around the building to find Bianca.

Who was not where he’d left her.

Add frustrating to tough and beautiful.

Ryder turned, searching the area where security lights barely reached. He started for the woods and had just reached the first tree when he heard someone stepping on twigs and fallen leaves.

Head down, watching where she stepped, Bianca strolled almost right up to him before she stopped and caught herself mid-shriek. “How do you do that?” she asked as if accusing him of something unfair.

“Do what?”

“Just appear without making a sound?”

“You weren’t paying attention.”

“Yes, I was.”  But the guilty note in her voice said otherwise.

“And you wouldn’t have had to be watching out if you’d stayed where I left you.”

“For your information,” she said, taking a threatening step toward him, hands going to her hips. “I barely avoided being seen by a security guy walking around. The minute he left, some lady came outside to walk her dog, who would’ve nailed me no matter how still I was. I hightailed it to the woods, but I’ve been walking back and forth to stay warm.”

Now he felt even worse for leaving her wet and cold, but he hadn’t had a choice. He reached for each side of his jacket that swallowed her and tugged her to him, feeling the tension in his chest ease the minute she snuggled up against him.

She was safe. That was all that mattered.

She shook with a hard chill.

He kissed the top of her head and snaked his arms around her back, giving her his heat. “I warmed the car on the way here. Let’s get you out of this air and into some dry clothes.”

She nodded and turned toward the parking lot with his arm around her shoulders. Bianca noted, “At least at this time in the morning, no one at the house will see us walk in looking like drowned rats.”

“They aren’t going to see us anyhow.”

She pulled away and turned to face him, a frown marring her smooth forehead. “What are you talking about?”

He had one chance of selling this to her and if he said they were leaving because he needed somewhere he could keep her safe, she’d balk.

“Bianca, someone is taking shots at you. It might be the shooter who killed Kearn, and I can see him wanting to retaliate against you for getting me out of prison. Or it could be that someone in VDE sees you as a threat to their illegal weapons deals. I want to go somewhere that we can see him coming. I can’t defend us here with no way to set a trap.”

She thought on that for a bit then said, “So you want me to play bait to draw him in?”

“Not in a million years.”  Ryder was sure the person who’d drawn a bead on Bianca would follow. One on one, Ryder could stop the threat. “I didn’t find a tracking device on the car but I’m betting there is one. You’re already a target. I want to lead him somewhere that we have an advantage over the threat. I’ll use your phone to leave a message for Hubrecht that we’ve got a lead on his leak that we need to check out.”

“What if
he’s
the perp and putting us up to finding the leak is just his way to test me to see if I really can get into his files and to see if you’re on his team or not? He might see our leaving like this as a threat.”